Abstract Over the past decade, royal commissions have been increasingly employed to address some of Australia's most pernicious and persistent problems. However, their recommendations often languish unimplemented. Research on why so many proposals fail to make it into policy and practice is divided. To explore the fraught road from recommendation to reform, this article analyses the early implementation of the recommendations of the 2016 Royal Commission into Family Violence (Victoria, Australia) from a relational vantage. To do so, this article brings attention to the under-explored insights ..read more

Abstract This Practice and Policy article examines return-to-office mandates, the latest human resource controversy. These mandates are an organisational directive for employees who have been working from home to return to working in their employer's premise. Drawing on the literature and our research on working from home and hybrid working, we consider whether mandates may prevent proximity bias. We conclude that mandates requiring employees to return to the office or caps which limit working from home are not only unnecessary, but may have negative consequences. In particular, mandates may c ..read more

Abstract A lot of literature on policy advisory systems (PASs) is based on Western liberal democracies, with scant attention paid to policymaking systems in authoritarian regimes. This paper examines the Iran's PAS and how it has changed between 1989 and 2023. The paper documents four distinctive phases in Iran's PAS: in-house ‘institutionalisation’, transitional ‘politicisation’, technocratic ‘externalisation’, and ‘technicisation’. We examine 16 representative advisory organisations (1989–2023) and show that while the Iranian PAS is well institutionalised and increasingly becoming externalis ..read more

Abstract Falling public trust in Australia's institutions warrants revisiting how public sector managers approach ethical decision-making. This study presents the findings of in-depth interviews with 35 local government managers in Australia and seeks to understand how managerial hierarchy influences the moral reasoning of managers. Through the lens of social learning and moral development theoretical perspectives, the findings indicate that local government managers do engage in different types of moral reasoning when presented with hypothetical ethical dilemmas, and their managerial status p ..read more

Australian Journal of Public Administration, Volume 83, Issue 1, Page 1-1, March 2024 ..read more

Abstract The consensus in the literature is that fiscal decentralisation is a means to reduce corruption. For China, the attenuating effects of fiscal decentralisation are often enhanced by other factors. This paper argues that prior findings serve to facilitate the design of anti-corruption measures but they do not address why individuals may engage in corruption. This is especially as individual evidence suggests that engaging in corruption is against professional ethos in China. This paper suggests that intergovernmental transfers and the relative level of economic development of where a pu ..read more

Abstract In Australia, 9.4% of young people aged 15–24 are unemployed, more than double the national rate. The national employment services system in Australia has, however, not successfully tackled this issue. While some wraparound programs have been implemented to better address young people's needs, most are designed to find young people any job rather than being tailored towards a specific career. Despite governments encouraging solutions that involve cross-sector collaboration with private businesses, the potential of industry-specific solutions has been less well-explored. Addressing thi ..read more

Abstract This article examines the themes of policy advice, expertise, and policy advisory systems. It argues that persistent challenges and more emergent trends involving their intersection can be effectively understood through the lenses of instrumentality, authority, and adaptability. In the wake of renewed questions about the continued viability of longstanding public administration advisory arrangements, these themes help locate new pressures on those arrangement such as those linked to technological developments, shifting conceptions of expertise, and growing recognition of the challenge ..read more

Abstract The Australian Industry Capability (AIC) program presents an example of hybridity where national security interests are served through a complex partnership between the Department of Defence, global prime contractors, and small and medium-sized Australian companies. Through a qualitative interview study of stakeholders in the defence industry by and triangulating findings from publicly available defence industry documents, this study aims to document the decoupling associated with the AIC program. We find that complexity and opacity, stemming from hybridity, create decoupling in ..read more

Abstract The dynamics between religion and state in public administration implementation theories has garnered scholarly interest over the past decade. However, these two realms of study are rarely combined. In this research note, I explore religion and, more specifically, the implementation of religion-based policies by street-level bureaucrats, as a public service like any other. I point to the more commonly studied aspect of this realm, namely the influence of personal religious tendencies on the exercise of discretion by the individual street-level bureaucrat. Further, I discuss the supply ..read more